


Capital Punishment

by orphan_account



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Apollo (mentioned), Major character death - Freeform, Unbeta'd, but not really, hades (mentioned) - Freeform, i cant write at 2am, i wrote this at 2am, just so you know, my friend was like "write a sad thing. like really sad", this made my friend cry, u dont want to read this btw, wait until i come out with something good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 14:56:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone will tell you that a deal with Hades is different from a deal with the devil, but Nico disagrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capital Punishment

Nico was angry.

 

No. He was enraged.

 

He'd ripped skeletal shards from of the ground, turning his surroundings into a spikepit. He left barren footprints in the wilting grass, pacing himself a tiny desert. Disgust stung in the back of his throat as he slammed his fists into the obsidian walls of the Hades cabin, shattering them like sugar-glass. For once, he was using his geokinesis. He couldn't believe he'd associated himself with such vile place for so long. The winter sun turned the glass shards purple and midnight blue, and Nico ground them into dust under his heels.

 

He couldn't believe nobody had told him.

 

How many people had known? How many people had sheltered him, like he was some fragile little thing in need of their protection?  

 

He'd been naïve, though, to believe for a second that his father had a heart. He should have cut ties years ago. It was infuriating, being used like that. He'd been happy, for a while. He'd been an exception. He'd proven that Apollo and his children could be nightmares to deal with. First Octavian, then Will...as if the two were comparable. He'd gotten his father an official place among the Olympians. All in some sort of nightmarish scheme, no doubt.

 

He was starting to realise why Hades was so often depicted as Satan.

 

Blood from Nico's hands dripped down onto the fine blanket of smashed glass. He wanted to scream until his lungs gave out. Ignorance had been bliss. Just as things were starting to get better, too. It had been his fault, partially at least. He'd been the one to kickstart the whole process.

 

How long would it have taken, for him to recover alone? Would he have survived at all, without Will?

 

He probably wouldn't have made it. But dying would be better than this.

 

Nico didn't understand how he hadn't noticed earlier. How he'd been dumb enough to believe Will's excuses. Was there a single soul alive who he could trust? He smashed a foot through a chunk of obsidian then sank to the glassy ground. Tiny pieces of volcanic glass glittered in the cuts on his hands.  

 

A year and a half. It had been barely a year and a half.

 

"Nico!"

 

Will was moving awkwardly around the shards of bone Nico had summoned, solely for the purpose of keeping him out. Nico closed his eyes. He couldn't deal with this. Not now. The shattered glass crunched under Will's feet, growing closer.

 

"Nico? Are you okay?"

 

Nico opened his eyes, if only to glare at Will. And regret it.

 

"Am _I_ okay?" Nico said. Will dropped to the ground next to him and nodded slowly, like it would have been too much effort to talk.

 

Will was hard to look at, these days. He was a collection of red flags held together by caffeine and clothes that used to fit. His decline had been slow, almost unnoticeable, then sudden. And in his typical fashion, he’d been _fantastic_ at hiding it. “Stress” was a better excuse than anyone had realised.

 

"Well." Will said, trying to keep his voice level, trying to sound like it didn't hurt to talk. "You were obliterating your cabin in a forest of bone spikes. That doesn't exactly seem okay to me."   

 

Even now, Will insisted on smiling, scrunching the corners of his sunken eyes. As if everything was fine. Like he'd injected a double-dose of dopamine and the world was grand. Nico could sense souls, fluttering away like heartbeats. Will's was getting weaker, fractionally, even as they spoke.   

 

"You have what- two weeks? And you're asking if _I'm_ okay?"  

 

"I wouldn't want to hurt you any more than I have to." Will said. As if he was some sort of inconvenience.  Nico wanted to tear his hair out; Will could be spectacularly frustrating.

 

"Gods, Will, stop being so stupid! It's not you!"  

 

"I'm the one who broke the laws of nature. Multiple times. This is at least _fair_. That's, like Hades's thing. He's fair."  

 

Fair. Like Will had done anything to deserve this.

 

"This isn't fair at all! You're dying over something you did when you were _three!_ "

 

"No, I’m dying over a repeat of a crime that I was warned against daily for over a _decade_.”  

 

Nico had to blink back tears.

 

“It’s my fault.” He said, dragging a finger through the smashed obsidian. It looked like the beaches in tartarus. The memories still made it hard to breathe.

 

“Now you’re being stupid.” Will said, shuffling closer. Nico did the same, so their arms were touching. He took Will's hand, gently. Will rested his head on Nico's shoulder, positioned awkwardly, still all over-long limbs and adolescent proportions.“I had a deal. A proper, legally binding contract and everything. I violated the terms. Just because you were involved doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”  

 

“Who curses a _preschooler_? Who curses _anyone_ for trying to save lives?”

 

Will's skin was hot, even hotter than usual- he'd said it was an Apollo thing. A defense against stress, somehow. Apollo’s children would spike flaring fevers as a last resort, burning like they’d eaten their bodyweight in ambrosia. Nico had never seen how it could help.

  
“There’s a difference between saving lives and stuffing souls back into cadavers. You can’t say you benefited from...what I did."  

 

Nico still stumbled sometimes, tripped over his own feet. He couldn't always feel his hands. Everything was slightly...off.

 

"I feel fantastic. Being _alive_ is fantastic. This is wrong."

 

"Whatever you do would just...put off the inevitable. The curse was already in place. "  Will shrugged, like he’d come to terms with it.

 

Nico wondered when they’d told him- who’d said “Hey there kiddo, your most significant talent is going to kill you slowly because your centuries-older brother was a dick one time, good luck!”. How could Will not hate Apollo, for essentially signing his execution warrant before he was even in school? How could he not hate Hades for arranging the whole contract?

 

"You know what my father told me? He said, this is the business of gods. He said that Asclepius was bad enough." Nico almost spat the words. Who the fuck held a grudge for thousands of years?

 

"I'm better than Asclepius? Wow." Will said. “Seriously though. You need to calm down. And. Um. maybe invest in a tent?”  

 

“How can you not be taking this seriously?”

 

“I have more important things to do. Any you’ll totally come visit me in the fields of punishment, right?”

 

“I’m not gonna let you die. There was that king who cheated death for years. Thanatos can fight me.”  

 

Will laughed at that, then descended into a coughing fit. Nico wasn’t sure what to do, so he just rubbed circles on the back of Will’s hand, like they were in some depressing romance novel. Will managed to stop, gasping for air, and spat blood. Watching it made Nico feel like someone was crushing his heart. He was disgusted in himself for not realising sooner just how dire the situation was.

  


Will squeezed Nico's hand. As if to reassure him.

 

“And to think I used to be against euthanasia.” He muttered. “I’m dying. My body is literally falling apart. I’ve accepted that. You can just run around the underworld whenever, I’m sure we’ll work something out.”

 

“I don’t want to go back into the domain of the god who... legislated for you to suffer like this.”

 

Will was never going to turn 16. Will was never going to learn to drive. Will would never get to see his siblings grow up or get into college or even drink. It was unfair. Most demigods died young- average life expectancy even in peacetime was barely thirty- but  this was sadistic. Dying in battle was much more fair, much less painful. As Nico had read in a book somewhere, there was no glory in dying _of_.

 

“You sound so pretentious. Can’t you just do the Orpheus thing, anyways? I’m sure your dad would let you bend the rules just a tiny bit.”  

 

“Don’t act like we’re still family. Or like we ever were. I just…” Nico trailed off, waving vaguely with his free hand, like he could pluck the words he wanted out of the air. Will sat upright to make unfocused eye contact. “I want to help you. I want you to _survive_.”

 

He wanted them to grow old together. It was legal for them to get married, even. They could have kids, somehow, and a house away from all the drama- surely between the two of them they would have been strong enough to fight through a couple decades more.

 

“You know that won’t happen.” For a second, Nico thought Will had read his mind. “If you’re so desperate to help me, why not do it by making now fantastic?” He was doing the thing again, the not-quite-magic in his tone of voice. It was like hearing the sensation of relief, safety, the first drops of rain after a scorching summer. And Nico found it immensely irritating. It was disrespectful,to manipulate someone like that.

 

Nico was going to fight back, when he worked out how. But for now Will was more important.

 

“How do I do that?” He asked.

 

“For a start, could you stop throwing tantrums that end with you crying, surrounded by large collections of sharps? That’s incredibly dangerous.”  Will said. "And stop with the opening-vast-fissures-in-the-earth thing. And take me on a million cute dates with your dad's money. Outrun the wrath of the gods. That's way better revenge than whatever you're planning."  

 

Nico planted a kiss on Will's burning cheek- even after so long, kissing another boy seemed surreal.

 

"Do not do that. Knowing the way things are going I'll give you every disease under the sun."  Will said.

 

"I can't take you on cute dates and not kiss you." Nico pointed out. He kissed Will again, pressing their lips together as a means of protest, ignoring the faint, disturbing taste of blood.  Will scowled at him.

 

"Fine. How 'bout you break into a lab and lick some Petri dishes while you're at it?" Will said. "My dad is the god of plagues. I'm infectious as heck."  

 

"Do you have a bucket list? Or, like, a wish?" Nico asked.

 

He wanted to storm down into the underworld and break things; find some way to fight their way out of this. But above all he wanted Will to be happy. They had bonded deeply enough that watching Will suffer was worse than suffering the same.

 

" I have the best bucket list _ever_."  Will answered. His eyes were shining, but that might just have been the fever. " Disneyland! Skydiving! Surfing! _You_."

 

Nico forced a smile.

 

"I'll try."  He said. 

 

They made it to Disneyland.

They made it halfway back.


End file.
